Day One

I am writing from the living room of my brother's house in Fort Collins, Colorado.

He and his wife, Katie, have just had their fourth child and I with three of my sisters have come to give kisses and hugs to our beautiful new niece Fiona Joy Peach Richards. 

Olen is home with Porter and London and Daisy tagged along with me because she wanted to meet her new friend. And because Chelsea requested I bring her so she can give her a squeeze.

I will have to catch up on the blog posts floating in my brain when I get home on Monday, I got too busy before I left. For the past week, I have been organizing the house, the laundry, and the pantry so that Olen and the big kids will have a very low-stress and high-fun five days.

I laid out clothes for Sunday and taught Olen the easiest way to do London's hair. Heaven help him. And I've set up cards to come in the mail to Porter and London for each day I'm gone. I still boarded the plane feeling like I forgot something. I promised Olen daily updates of our adventures in Colorado. You're welcome to join him for the recaps.

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Day 1

First of all, I love my brother's Mac. Don't tell my PC. 

Daisy was such an angel on the 1.5 hour flight to Denver. She slept a little and played a little. Mostly she just held still and stared wide-eyed at me not knowing what to think of the whole thing. 

I left 100-something degrees in Arizona for Colorado's greenness and 80-something weather. It feels like Heaven and the air is so clean it smells like laundry soap. 

Chris took us to their favorite hamburger joint, SmashBurger, and back to their house in Fort Collins. We stayed up late talking and loving on their new baby. Daisy wanted to play with her little friend, but Fiona wasn't having so much fun getting her eyes scratched so maybe later. Like in two years.

The plan was to meet Chelsea, who is flying from Virginia, in Denver but her flight was canceled and rescheduled for today. The new plan was to pick Chelsea up from Denver today on her new flight, but as of now she's stuck in Minnesota without any flights out to Denver. Now the new-new plan is to raise some hell with her airline and get Chelsea here by bus or train or automobile. If you deny sisters who only have five days to spend with a brother and a sister on a trip that has been planned for months you can bet the gloves are coming off.

UPDATE: Chelsea comes in tonight from Milwaukee. We couldn't get Chles here any sooner but Katie Mae called and sweet-talked the airline people into giving Chelsea free stuff and it will be okay.